Michael Parenti Quotes

Quotes about:

• People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.

  Michael Parenti

  Thinking, People, World

  37 Copy quote

• The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments.

  Michael Parenti

  Peace, War, Thinking

  64 Copy quote

• The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

  Michael Parenti

  Nature, Money, Army

  "Against Empire". Book by Michael Parenti, May 1995.

  66 Copy quote

• You see there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime,
  and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of
  property.

  Michael Parenti

  Believe, Fighting, People

  57 Copy quote

• In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.

  Michael Parenti

  School, College, Political

  58 Copy quote

• The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.

  Michael Parenti

  Honesty, Hard Work, Compassion

  61 Copy quote

• The dirty truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty.

  Michael Parenti

  Dirty, Political, Poverty

  Michael Parenti (1996). “Dirty Truths”, p.21, City Lights Books

  22 Copy quote

• [The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy.

  Michael Parenti

  Home, Class, People

  26 Copy quote

• The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

  Michael Parenti

  Government, Order, Political

  "Democracy for the Few". Book by Michael Parenti, 1974.

  43 Copy quote

• The powers that be not only try to control events,
  but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.

  Michael Parenti

  Memories, Understanding, Trying

  15 Copy quote

• Apathy's a problem but who cares?

  Michael Parenti

  Who Cares, Apathy, Care

  22 Copy quote

• Democrats—lily-livered, weasel-assed collaborators.

  Michael Parenti

  Lilies, Weasels, Democrat

  12 Copy quote

• With unfailing consistency, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests.

  Michael Parenti

  Country, Powerful, Government

  33 Copy quote

• Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on.

  Michael Parenti

  Responsible Government, Leader, Accountability

  Michael Parenti (2004). “Superpatriotism”, p.81, City Lights Books

  28 Copy quote

• Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.

  Michael Parenti

  Military, Real, People

  Michael Parenti (1995). “Against Empire”, p.77, City Lights Books

  15 Copy quote

• You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

  Michael Parenti

  Political, Necks, Feels

  Michael Parenti (1996). “Dirty Truths”, p.150, City Lights Books

  44 Copy quote

• Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.

  Michael Parenti

  Communication, Political, Mind

  Michael Parenti (2011). “The Culture Struggle”, p.130, Seven Stories Press

  46 Copy quote

• With each newly minted crisis, US leaders roll out the same time-tested scenario. They start demonizing a foreign leader ... charging them with being communistic or otherwise dictatorial, dangerously aggressive, power hungry, genocidal, given to terrorism or drug trafficking, ready to deny us access to vital resources, harboring weapons of mass destruction, or just inexplicably "anti-American" and "anti-West." Lacking any information to the contrary, the frightened public ... are swept along.

  Michael Parenti

  Mass Destruction, Leader, Drug

  35 Copy quote

• When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.

  Michael Parenti

  Political, Changed

  Michael Parenti (2010). “Democracy for the Few”, p.184, Cengage Learning

  19 Copy quote

• A nation as such does not give aid to another nation. More precisely, the common citizens of our country, through their taxes, give to the privileged elites of another country. As someone once said: foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country.

  Michael Parenti

  Country, Rich Countries, People

  37 Copy quote

• Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it.

  Michael Parenti

  Country, People, Political

  Michael Parenti (1996). “Dirty Truths”, p.2, City Lights Books

  32 Copy quote

• Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti- communism already has.

  Michael Parenti

  World, Might, Facts

  Michael Parenti (1970). “The Anti-communist Impulse”

  23 Copy quote

• The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics.

  Michael Parenti

  Jobs, Defense, Four

  Michael Parenti (1995). “Against Empire”, p.166, City Lights Books

  30 Copy quote

• No system in history capitalism has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.

  Michael Parenti

  Years, Practice, Culture

  18 Copy quote

• Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.

  Michael Parenti

  Class, Political, Want

  Michael Parenti (1996). “Dirty Truths”, p.46, City Lights Books

  41 Copy quote

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